title: Gastrointestinal morphological alterations in obese rats kept under hypercaloric diets.
abstract: Hypercaloric diets have been successfully used as experimental models of obesity. This work compared morphological characteristics of inferior gastrointestinal organs. The experiment lasted 10 weeks, during which the rats' food consumption, body weight, distance between the mouth and neck, distance between mouth and neck, distance between neck and tail, and abdominal circumference were evaluated weekly. After the sacrifice of the rats, 20 variables referring to inferior gastrointestinal morphology were assessed. The results comprised descriptive statistics of the data, analysis of main components, linear correlation, and t-tests. Significant differences were found between the two groups for the variables of abdominal circumference, retroperitoneal fat, ratio between retroperitoneal fat/animal weight, stomach weight, ratio between animal weight/intestine weight and mesentery/animal weight, length of small intestine, length of large intestine, and lateral line of the cecum. The data allow us to state that a hypercaloric diet can be responsible an increase in fat in the abdominal cavity as well as gastrointestinal morphological alterations, principally in stomach development.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências da Saúde, Centro Universitário Norte do Espírito Santo, São Mateus, ES, Brazil.
authors.forename: Raphael Castiglioni
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Nascimento
authors.forename: Haryanne
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mabel
authors.forename: Bruna Nunes
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Queiroz
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Paresque
keywords: diet-induced obesity; gastrointestinal morphology; hypercaloric diet